[patrickk]

> No single entity should be able to terrorize the citizens of a nation state like that.

Talk about hyperbole. Plenty of countries like Switzerland or Norway don't feel terrorised by the EU, instead exist peacefully alongside it. Plenty more want to join voluntarily.

Another fact that seems completely ignored- you can't put a price on deliberately creating links so that European powers don't tear each other to pieces, just like they have done for thousands of years. The EU deserves credit for minimising the likelihood of devastating war, which has happened for much of recorded history in Europe.

[hjrnunes]

European wars, particularly the nastier ones are born out of hegemony and counter-hegemony. The EU was bound to be an hegemonic construct dominated by the country that could dominate it - which basically means France, Germany or Great Britain. Turned out to be Germany.

The utopia of a united Europe is what caused all of the devastating wars - whether it was under the guise of a Spanish empire, a Napoleonic empire or a German reich. Whether it is done by military, political or economic power, it always backfires.

We are different people. What we have in common is mostly Christian religion and Christian morals. Or rather the purified, distilled secularised version of it called "humanism" now.

But some visionary always comes with this radical new idea (actually a thousand years old) that we are somehow all the same and should all be in some sort of union. And it always ends up in war.